The weather’s been all over the place the last few weeks as winter thinks about moving over for spring and then thinks again. Gavin’s been working on designing some Lego ships with moving parts. He spends time working on a concept, sifting through all of our loose bits to find the right pieces and fitting them together and reworking things when they don’t work the way he wanted the first time.

He really wants to be able to write MineCraft mods and create texture packs so this week I challenged him to find a tutorial or class to learn about that. He found one and seems to be enjoying it so far. Computer programming is something he definitely can imagine himself doing later on.

Lilah’s been baking cakes. Vegan and gluten free baking is tricky and I’m seriously impressed with her efforts. She’s baking a cake a week these days and she’s learning about how things get weird when you forget an ingredient (cake without sugar!) and how it helps to try a recipe several times with different adjustments to tinker with it and get it closer to what you were hoping for than the initial attempt. She’s having a lot of fun and creating confidence and pride in her abilities and creativity. She isn’t afraid to leave the recipe behind! Very fun and impressive! We’ve had chocolate cake with chocolate orange frosting, vanilla cake with vanilla lemon frosting, vanilla cake with chocolate frosting so far. Mmmmmmm.

We’ve been reading together and discussing, working on developing written response skills. I’ve been painting a bit and I’m trying to get comfortable with meditation and work my flexibility and strength back from my long time off of my right leg. We’re rebuilding some of our garden boxes to be deeper and a bit smaller. I can’t wait to get started planting! I’ve started a few seeds inside. We’ll see if the cats leave them alone long enough to sprout.

We’ve been going on walks near and far and doing a bit of hanging out with friends outside. We’ve been doing some closet cleaning and some kitten exercising.

Chris and I went away overnight, leaving the kids home together to see if they would feel confident being home alone together over a longer stint. We had a lovely overnight with hiking in Southern Utah and a relaxed drive through every kind of weather and the kids worked together to feel safe and connected, eating together and reminding each other of tasks. They chose to spend most of their time on their computers, playing with friends but took breaks to care for themselves and our cats and bird. I’m impressed by their responsibility and teamwork and proud of them. I think they feel the same.